


badlands

by jaekyu



Category: Monsta X (Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Murder, Power Imbalance, Robbery, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 18:53:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: IN THE VEIN OFBADLANDS, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, BONNIE & CLYDE-- two lovers and the end of all things.





	badlands

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings** : if the tags didn't give it away this thing has murder, lots of descriptions of blood, and just general destructive and illegal behaviour. also possible emotional abuse/manipulation? i think it's fair to warn for that. this is a very experimental and pretty dark piece of writing. a lot of stuff happens “off-screen” and is only implied but there’s still a lot death and blood and murder. it’s not a nice story. BUT DO I EVER WRITE NICE THINGS? NOT USUALLY.
> 
> also! all of the section titles (that’s what i’m calling them, you’ll know what i mean when you start reading) are the names tarot cards. the meaning of the cards have some significance here, so [here](https://www.daily-tarot-girl.com/tarot-card-meanings/list-of-tarot-card-meanings/) is the website i used as reference. i am not a tarot card reader, to be clear, so i apologize for any inaccuracies on that front.
> 
> okay listen i’ve always wanted to write something with the Criminal Lovers On The Run trope so i hope someone (anyone) finds some enjoyment out of this.

I dreamed I was digging your grave  
with my bare hands. I touched your face  
and skin fell in thin strips to the ground

until only your tongue remained whole.  
\- “WHAT THE ORPHANS INHERIT”, Sherman Alexie

 

and I'll never go home again  
(place the call, feel it start)  
favourite friend  
(and nothing's wrong when nothing's true)  
I live in a hologram with you  
\- “BUZZCUT SEASON”, Lorde

 

 

 

 

 

 **THE HANGED MAN**.

 

“A man’s pain defines his life,” that’s what Yoongi’s father always used to say.

“A man’s pain will define his life,” he’d push his thumb against the scar on Yoongi’s arm, the one from when he was a child and he had sliced his forearm wide open with a misplaced kitchen knife. “Because every pain after that will always be worse or it won’t be.”

You’ll always remember the worst one. Until the worst pain you have is the one that kills you.

Yoongi’s father always used to say this. And then his father’s blood had sprayed in upward trajectory across Yoongi’s face and it was all Yoongi was able to think about.

 

 

The knife had been sitting on a butcher’s block in the centre of the kitchen. Recently sharpened like a dangerous kind of smile and it was still wet with the blood of a meat no one will remember. Everyone will remember the knife. They do not remember the meat.

Yoongi had been six and half, up on his tip toes. There is no one who could tell this story properly. Yoongi does not remember, his mother had been in the other room, had only seen the aftermath, his father had not been home at all. Somehow, someway, the knife slips. It catches into the yet to be lost baby fat of Yoongi’s forearm, ripping skin apart in it’s wake. It clatters to the floor, blood follows, and Yoongi is crying before he even knows what he’s crying about.

Yoongi had needed fourteen stitches and the floor had needed bleach.

They had thrown the knife away.

“You can’t keep that kind of thing around,” his mother insisted, clutching her shirt collar. Superstitions followed her from girlhood into motherhood. “Something like that - if it’s had someone’s blood once it’ll always come back for more.”

They throw the knife away.

No one ever forgets the knife.

 

 

At the end of a dusty road you’d never recognize:

A diner with vinyl seats that stick with sweat in the summer. Coffee that they leave for too long on the hot plate. Yesterday’s paper, bacon burnt black, an old man at the bar who comes every morning for breakfast and stays for a few hours, grease stained on aprons.

Two boys, at a booth in the back, whispering.

_I wish I could go home._

_What home? There’s no home anymore._

_I know that. Don’t you think I know that? I know that._

_Do you wish you’d never met me?_

_Don’t ask me questions you don’t really want me to answer._

_Fine. Okay. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Get your breakfast. I wanna get out of here._

 

 

 

 

 **THE LOVERS**.

 

The spot on Kihyun’s neck that is the softest:

The base of his jugular, cradled from upwards by the steady beat of his pulse and from the bottom, the sturdiness of his collarbone. Unmarred by scars, untouched by the stubble of manhood. Yoongi could drink the sweat from that spot and not feel thirst for years.

 

 

_My name’s Kihyun. Who are you?_

_Yoongi._

_It’s nice to meet you._

 

 

Yoongi pushes his whole body against Kihyun’s and breathes out against his neck, against that soft spot there, deep red from being caught between Yoongi’s teeth. Kihyun’s breath comes out like a car that won’t start: failed, try again, fail, try again - finally, his chest moves deeply with a successful exhale.

Yoongi rolls his hips down to meet Kihyun’s thrust upwards. It’s not perfect, the knocking of slim hips against slim hips, but it works. Yoongi can feel the thick of Kihyun’s cock hidden behind his jeans, matching Yoongi’s own hard on.

The world moves on it slow starts and stops: _start,_ and Kihyun sucks in another breath, _stop,_ while he holds it, _start,_ when Kihyun pushes his mouth against Yoongi’s for a kiss, _stop,_ when their mouths connect, _start,_ when they part and Kihyun digs his nails into the back of Yoongi’s neck.

“I love you,” Kihyun says the same way a person would say _fuck me._

“I love you too,” Yoongi replies and that sounds the way -

Well, that sounds the way a person would say _I love you too_.

 

 

 

 

 **THE TOWER**.

 

“Who gave you this,” Kihyun pushes three fingers against the bruise on Yoongi’s cheek. He sucks in a breath. “Tell me who gave you this.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Yoongi leans away from Kihyun’s touch. Kihyun’s face twists, caught between hurt and anger. It’s ugly. It makes Yoongi wish he didn’t love him.

“It matters to me.” Kihyun insists. “Everything that happens to you matters to me. Everything.”

And there it is: the way Yoongi would do anything to keep Kihyun near him, gurgling in his guts, clawing up his throat, pushing against his rib cage. Kihyun could say, _how many bones would you break for me?_ and Yoongi would say _however many you wanted me too._

Kihyun doesn’t ask that. He never asks that.

There a lot of other things he asks instead.

The first is: “Was it your dad.”

He already knows the answer.

 

 

_We need to leave._

_We can’t. My dad._

A pair of hands cupped around a face. _Fuck your dad. Fuck him. We need to leave._

 

 

 

 

 **PAGE OF SWORDS**.

 

Yoongi’s father is facing away from him. He’s standing in front of the window that overlooks their backyard. Yoongi wishes he could remember things that happened back there, but there are no memories he can find in his brain. The sun casts his whole figure in shadow. It’s like he’s barely there at all.

He doesn’t hear Yoongi come up behind him.

The blood smells like iron.

 

 

A pair of hands cupped around a face, smudging the tracks of tears, pushing foreheads together.

_You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you? I love you._

_I love you too._

_Let’s get out of here._

 

 

 

 

 **THE DEVIL**.

 

_I shot him._

A laugh. _What did he think about that?_

_How am I supposed to know? He’s dead. How the fuck am I supposed to know?_

 

 

Breakfast the morning after is had at noon and it’s fast food french fries washed down with whiskey. They’ve pulled the car to the edge of the road, a wheat field spread out in front of them, the sun beating down above them. Like this, it’s easy to pretend things are the same. Easier, but they don’t do it.

“We’re almost out of money,” Kihyun says. He wipes the grease on his fingers on Yoongi’s jeans. For a second Yoongi sees blood left in the wake of Kihyun’s fingers but then he blinks and it’s gone.

“And gas.” Yoongi adds. “We’re barely four hours out.”

“We need money.” Kihyun says. It sounds ominous. Like he’s already asked himself how they’ll get the money and he’s given himself an answer, too. He leans his head against Yoongi’s shoulder and sighs.

Yoongi doesn’t know what to say. So he parrots himself, says, “and gas.”

 

 

The convenience store would look abandoned if not for the man behind the counter. The bell above the door rings when Yoongi and Kihyun enter, and then the silence is deafening.

“You kid’s must be far from home,” the man says. He’s got a scar that starts at his cheek, cut through the centre of his eye and his eyebrow, and ends at his temple. Yoongi wants to lift his sleeve, expose his only ugly evidence of pain, of suffering, of sacrifice and say _how’d you get yours?_ But he doesn’t. He follows Kihyun to the far back of the store, the meeting in an L shape of coolers full of drinks.

Kihyun grabs himself a can of soda. Then he grabs one for Yoongi. On the condensation of the cooler door he writes _K + Y_ and draws a heart around it. He never stops smiling.

“We don’t get many young people around here,” the old man continues. They stand at the counter now, two cans of soda presented to the man with a pack of gum that’s worth fifty-cents. “Much less one’s I don’t recognize.”

“We’re on a road trip, sir,” Kihyun responds. And it’s not a lie but there is no situation where that would feel like the truth. “Just passing through.”

“That’s good,” the man presses buttons on the cash, it springs open. “Good to see the world while you’re still young enough to do it.”

Kihyun hums. “Oh,” he feigns surprise, “I forgot. Can I get a slurpee?”

The old man smiles, “of course, son.”

He turns towards the machine. The cash is still wide open.

Yoongi’s fingers close around cool metal.

 

 

A kiss, half against a mouth and half on the skin directly beside it.

_You know I hate it._

_I know. I’m sorry. I love you._

A hand clutched around a bundle of crumpled bills. Blood, stretching across the floor, shaping like tethers in the grout of the tiled floors, reaching out for something to grab onto.

_Let’s get out of here._

A glass fridge door, dripping with condensation, and two letters wiped away.

 

 

 

 

 **TEN OF SWORDS**.

 

The gas station has a display of postcards. Yoongi’s pretty sure they’re in Atlanta but the postcards say all sorts of places. _WELCOME TO NORTH DAKOTA_ and _GREETINGS FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.!_. There a pictures of moose, bald eagles, whatever the fuck a group of cows is called. Mountain ranges and open fields, silhouetted in early morning and evening suns. A rack of postcards for people who don’t want to be found, or for people who want to pretend they’ve been all sorts of places they’d never be able to point out on a map.

Kihyun picks one up, it’s got a single bright orange flower on it. He pulls a pen from his pocket, flips it over.  _Dear Mom and Dad,_ he writes.

“That’s not funny.” Yoongi stills Kihyun’s hand with fingers around his wrist.

“Who’s being funny?”

 

 

Yoongi’s leg is throbbing. “Baby, oh, baby,” Kihyun’s hand scramble against the hole in Yoongi’s thigh. His hands keep slipping, wet with blood the way his face is wet with tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I love you. It’ll be okay.”

 _I don’t want to hurt him,_ Yoongi had said. _Okay,_ Kihyun had told him, _we won’t hurt him, we won’t, we just can’t pay for this gas_. After that: the knife in the man’s hand had looked familiar, like it was that same one that tore open Yoongi’s arm. It looked even more familiar, seated deep in Yoongi’s thigh, and more again, when Kihyun pulled it out and it was covered in Yoongi’s blood.

_A thing like that - a thing like that tastes blood and it’ll always want more._

Kihyun gets Yoongi in the tub of a motel room. It’s not like it matters, he’s already bled all over the carpet. “Fuck,” Yoongi swears. Kihyun’s getting his jeans off, shucking them down his legs, trying not to jostle too much but trying to be fast. Yoongi’s blood spurts out of his wound on a particularly rough jolt. It looks even more red against the faded porcelain of the tub. “This is it, this is how I fucking die.”

“No, no,” Kihyun sounds near hysterical. Yoongi feels an odd satisfaction. And all it took was getting stabbed in the leg for Kihyun’s mask to crack, right down the middle, and split open like an egg shell. “Not today, not now. You’re not leaving me all alone.” He puts his palm against Yoongi’s cheek, warm with blood. Yoongi spits into the tub.

Kihyun fashions a tourniquet out of pillow case. He finds a sewing kit he lifted from the gas station in his pants pocket. Yoongi sits in the bath, leg propped up on the edge of the basin, and bites his knuckles.

“I didn’t want to hurt him.” Yoongi says quietly. He winces, feeling the tug of thread beneath his skin.

Kihyun doesn’t reply. All focus dedicated to a single task. It’s not like it matters. There’s blood all over Kihyun’s shirt and hands and not all of it’s Yoongi’s and none of it is his own.

 

 

A gas station.

_There’s cameras_

_Look._

_What?_

_The cameras. The red light on them._

_There is no red light on them._

_Exactly._

 

 

“You’re a shitty nurse,” Yoongi says. His pants are discarded, ruined on the floor. He’ll need new ones.

Kihyun looks up from the spot where he lays on Yoongi’s chest. He hasn’t even washed his hands. All he had done was help Yoongi limp over to the motel room bed and laid down with him. “Don’t do that to me again,” he says, cups Yoongi’s cheek again, and kisses him.

 

 

 

 

 **FIVE OF CUPS**.

 

_You always want to leave. Wherever we go you want to leave. That’s how this all started, remember? Because you wanted us to leave and we couldn’t._

_I said I didn’t want to talk about this anymore._

 

 

A list thought of but never committed to pen and paper:

_1\. Father_

_2\. The man at the convenience store_

_3\. The man at the gas station_

_4\. The man in the car_

_(Incomplete)._

 

 

“I love you,” Kihyun says.

Yoongi doesn’t look away from the road. He doesn’t know where it goes or where it came from. He’s wearing his old jeans, the ones with the gaping hole in the thigh and the blood crusted into the fabric. The car is a mess, it was a mess when they found it. The only thing that’s new is the splatter of blood across the leather of the backseat.

Yoongi traces, _do you?_ with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. The words make his mouth feel full.

“You never say it back anymore,” Kihyun grabs the sleeve of Yoongi’s shirt. He tugs on it, Yoongi’s hand falters on the steering wheel, and the car swerves into the opposite lane before Yoongi corrects it. “If you’re never going to say it back again I’d rather you drive this car off the road.”

“Stop it,” Yoongi pulls Kihyun’s hand off of him. He relents. “I love you too,” Yoongi says. The words feel like bones in his mouth, ripping open his cheeks and cracking his teeth.

 

 

 

 

 **DEATH**.

 

A long, long time ago -- no, that’s a lie. It wasn’t that long ago, it only feels as if it’s been a lifetime. We’ll say it like this, _a long, long time ago_ but we’ll make sure you know it hasn’t been a long, long time at all.

A long, long time ago:

 _Everyone’s gotta die._ Kihyun says it, same as he always has, only this time he’s talking about himself. He’s talking about himself and he’s talking about Yoongi. _Even us, we gotta die too._

Yoongi has a black eye that keeps throbbing. He considers jabbing a fork into his eye and pulling it right out his skull. _Yeah, yeah. That’ll be a fun. I wonder how it’ll go._

Kihyun hums. _Every time I imagine it, the finger holding the trigger has you attached to it._

 _You’re so fucked up_. Kihyun’s smiling when Yoongi says it.

He’s smiling, too, when Yoongi proves him right.

 

 

 

 

 **THE MAGICIAN**.

 

Things you know, inherently, about shooting a gun but no one ever says aloud:

It, like all things, gets easier with practice.

 

 

 

 


End file.
